State Department Views Anti-jewish Developments in East Europe with Mounting Concern

The State Department has voiced its “increasing concern” over the “brutal and inexcusable denial of human rights in the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Rumania, Hungary and Bulgaria with respect to the cultural and spiritual life of the Jewish people in these countries” and commended the Jewish Labor Committee for its efforts to focus world attention on the “cultural and spiritual genocide systematically pursued” in these countries against the Jews.

Willard L. Thorp, Assistant Secretary of State, in a letter to Adolph Held, president of the Jewish Labor Committee, praised the J.L.C. for its submission to the Human Rights Division of the United Nations of a petition urging an inquiry into charges of cultural and spiritual genocide by the Soviet Union and its satellite nations against Jews, the Committee disclosed today.

“Although there are no appropriate means at the present time in the United Nations for the adequate consideration of this petition, we support the desirability of repeatedly calling these conditions to the attention of the civilized world,” the Assistant Secretary declared. He emphasized that “no opportunity should be lost to press for the observance in the USSR and the other eastern European countries of the principle of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms.”